


Nevermore

by AshaStark



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 18:26:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1097207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AshaStark/pseuds/AshaStark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jeyne Westerling reflects on her past, present and future. Set at Riverrun during A Storm of Swords.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nevermore

“There’s been a raven.”

That was how it started. Robb Stark, injured and recovering in my bed, and one of my father’s servants brought a message.

It taught me to dread those black birds. And yet I shouldn’t, because that raven’s message, tragic as it was, led to my love. I shed tears with him, yes. Tears over his lost little brothers, sent off with the Stanger at so young an age. And what danger can a four-year-old pose? Or for that matter, a nine-year-old who must rely on another for his legs? Where was the sense?

If this war has taught me anything, it’s that the Stanger calls for the least likely people. The least deserving.

I held him after he read that message. For hours and hours, it seemed, and he clung to me, shedding the tears he couldn’t show to the world, while I stroked my fingers through his red-brown hair and learned its texture. While my body learned the planes of his, my meager curves to his hardness.

So young, yet honed even so. The harshness of life in the North had prepared him for much and more, but not for this, never for this.

Not only the deaths of two innocent boys, but the betrayal. He’d grown to manhood with Theon Greyjoy. Hunted with him, sparred with him, fought beside him to defend those same brothers from wolves and wildlings.

Yes, Robb wept, but there was rage behind the tears, as well. Rage, revenge, and a burning desire to take his own back.

But he couldn’t take his own back—not yet—so he took me instead.

And I let him, for what else could I do? His raw need and emotion that day robbed me of all will to resist him. If he faces his enemies with that same pure fire, it’s no surprise he hasn’t lost a single one of his battles. The Lannisters should rightly fear him. And the boy at King’s Landing? He has no hope to regain the North to his cause.

Not while my Robb is king.

He’s left me now, and I’ve no inkling of when I might see him again. For days, I’ve stood on this triangular balcony that thrusts toward the Tumblestone meets the Red Fork, but my gaze turns ever northward, toward the Twins.

Three times, I tried to convince him to take me with him to the wedding, at the very least. But he stood firm. “You’re safer at Riverrun where the Tullys will guard you. I’ll come back after I’ve retaken Winterfell, I swear.”

And so I stand and wait and hope my Robb will come back to me soon, at the same time praying to the Warrior to lend him strength and the Mother to protect him through the battles to come. There will be many. This struggle is not over. As if I could see with the eyes of a raven, my mind takes flight, over the Red Fork, over the Riverlands, past the Twins, to follow him on his march north. Moat Cailin. Deepwood Motte. Winterfell itself, sad and desolate and burned. But we will rebuild. It is part of a king’s duty to his people.

The rasp of a cleared throat behind me interrupts my imaginings. A servant, dressed the blue and red of the Tullys stands on the threshold. In his fingers, he holds a square of parchment.

“Your grace, there’s been a raven.”


End file.
